We live on board a Bristol 45.5 sailboat and are cruising as the seasons allow and our interests suggest. We are June Wan and Bruce Clark. June is an IT person who 'retired' when the economy went sour and her company in Jersey City cut staff. Bruce is a retired high school teacher and sometime author of geography textbooks. This blog will chronicle their lifestyle and will also include general observations on life, politics, international development, and geography (broadly defined of course!).

Monday, August 24, 2009

A new boat? Almost looks like it on the outside.

Here is Ainia after the "accident". You can see where the hole is just below the dock line. The teak rail just below the deck was also crushed.

The 'new' Ainia:

Repairs to the collision damage are now complete (except for varnishing that we are doingHere is the boat after painting. The insurance (other guy's not surprisingly) paid for the repair including painting one side of the boat so that the colour would match. We paid the extra to get the entire boat painted since the finish was getting pretty tired and banged up when you got close to it. This meant that we were on the hook for about US$2600 rather than almost US$12000 for a separate paint job. The total cost was more than US$16000. Top level yards in New England are famous for being expensive and this one was no exception. The work seems first rate but the cost is nasty indeed.

We thought about going with same colour as before (Aristo Blue) but it is not the most practical choice even though it looks wonderful and is the most common colour on larger Bristols. The gray colour has some particular advantages though. Scratches do not show up nearly as much as on a darker hull. There was a Bristol 41.1 next to us out of the water that was in impeccable shape except for a lateral scratch about 8 feet along at about dock height. You could see it from over a 100 feet away even though it was not a wide scratch. Also the gray keeps the interior of the hull much cooler on sunny days. This makes it more liveable and reduces the load on the freezer and fridge units. At first I was prepared to give up some measure of beauty for practicality but the boat looks terrific - more streamlined than before and a bit more modern. BTW, the colour is not as blue as it appears on my monitor - more of a light, neutral gray.

****Big BillHurricane Bill gave us some anxious moments but turned out to be a non-event for southern coastal New England. Early projections were not good but the closest approach was about 150 nm and Noank is behind Fisher's Island which is a very substantial, 4 mile long breakwater. The VHF marine forecasts include both the coastal weather and the offshore weather (from 20 to 200 miles offshore). The offshore forecast for eastern George's Bank (east of Cape Cod) had winds to 90 knots and waves to 44 feet. The wave forecasts acknowledge that the biggest, individual waves can exceed the average by 1/3. This means that there could have been waves of 66 feet - not a happy prospect.

****What Now?June is now back in Beijing for three weeks or so to visit her ill father and spend time with the rest of her family. I drove her to JFK airport before continuing on to Toronto for a week or so. (Time for a brief rant - is there any excuse for flights to Beijing from New York being half the cost of those from Toronto? To add insult to injury - the flights from New York fly directly over Toronto on their way to China. End of rant.)

After dropping June off I went to visit our friends at Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City. It was most pleasant and almost felt like coming home. It was a bit bittersweet because we left there because of someone else's decision (essentially the world economic system) rather than our own.

Next week I will be heading back to CT to work on varnishing the replacement of the plastic (polycarbonate) in the hatches and ports. Also I will be checking out the installation of our now rebuilt generator.